KIRKUS REVIEW

Gray bridges abound, but there’s
only one major one that’s orange—and here’s how that happened.

Striving for whimsy when he’s not
being patronizing—“It was a long trip, but the pieces of steel did not mind,
for they are inanimate objects”—Eggers tracks the building of the Golden Gate
Bridge from rejected design proposals (“It was functional, but it was grotesque”)
on. Along with giving the bridge’s innovative features a light once-over, he
introduces the project’s three main architects. One had designed the Manhattan
Bridge, “believed to be in or near New York City,” as Eggers coyly puts it;
another led the populist campaign to keep the finished structure the
International Orange with which its prefabricated steel parts were (and still
are) coated because it “somehow looked right.” Whether young readers will find
these observations, or such lines as, “Sometimes the things humans make baffle
even the humans who make them,” illuminating is anybody’s guess. In broad
collages assembled from large pieces of cut paper, Nichols illustrates the
enterprise with stylized portrait heads and abstract views of golden hills set
against blue (or sometimes gray) expanses of sea and sky. The finished bridge
poses grandly in several.

That it’s the “best-known and
best-loved bridge in the world” is arguable; if it is, one wonders why it needs
a self-conscious, 104-page picture book to draw attention to it. (jacket
poster) (Informational picture book. 7-9)

Be the first to discover new talent!
Each week, our editors select the one author and one book they believe to be most worthy of your attention and highlight them in our Pro Connect email alert.
Sign up here to receive your FREE alerts.